Marcos Jr. leaves again for another foreign trip with a huge entourage as ordinary Filipinos grapple with soaring food and fuel prices and low wages. We are made to believe that these foreign trips are good for the country, even as government provides no real solutions to the crisis. In Davos, Marcos will boast of so-called “economic growth” in the Philippines even as the country is P13.6 trillion deep in debt and inflation is at a record-high of 8.1% and with 12.9 million people considering themselves as poor. What growth is Marcos trying to promote exactly in the World Economic Forum?
This is governance through the window-dressing of poverty. It is insensitive to the plight of the poor and oblivious to the crisis gripping the nation. The huge presidential entourage in particular, to an expensive destination, is again insensitive to taxpayers and reminds us of last year’s F1 Grand Prix incident.
What is needed now is government intervention to lower food prices, not foreign junkets. What is needed now is a serious effort to strengthen the domestic economy, not to entangle it with more foreign investments and foreign debt. The crisis requires a response beyond the usual rhetoric. At the start of his term, Marcos said that his ultimate goal for the economy is that not one more Filipino will go hungry. With today’s food crisis, this is nothing but a pipe dream.
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